ey
cannot but go as long as they fear that which ruins the body and not that
which ruins both the body and the soul. "Whether we shall be killed,"
they argue, "or maimed in these chinnampos, or whatever they are called,
whither we are driven, we do not know; it yet may happen that we shall
get through safely, and, moreover, with rewards and glory, like those
sailors who are now being feasted all over Russia because the Japanese
bombs and bullets did not hit them, but somebody else; whereas should we
refuse, we should be certainly sent to prison, starved, beaten, exiled to
the province of Yakoutsk, perhaps even killed immediately." So with
despair in their hearts, leaving behind a good rational life, leaving
their wives and their children,--they go.

Yesterday I met a Reservist soldier accompanied by his mother and wife.
All three were riding in a cart; he had had a drop too much; his wife's
face was swollen with tears. He turned to me:--

"Good-by to thee! Lyof Nikolaevitch, off to the Far East."

"Well, art thou going to fight?"

"Well, some one has to fight!"

"No one need fight!"

He reflected for a moment. "But what is one to do; where can one
escape?"

I saw that he had understood me, had understood that the work to which he
was being sent was an evil work.

"Where can one escape?" That is the precise expression of that mental
condition which in the official and journalistic world is translated into
the words--"For the Faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland." Those who,
abandoning their hungry families, go to suffering, to death, say as they
feel, "Where can one escape?" Whereas those who sit in safety in their
luxurious palaces say that all Russian men are ready to sacrifice their
lives for their adored Monarch, and for the glory and greatness of
Russia.

Yesterday, from a peasant I know, I received two letters, one after the
other. This is the first:--

"Dear Lyof Nikolaevitch,--Well, to-day I have received the official
announcement of my call to the Service; to-morrow I must present myself
at the headquarters. That is all. And after that--to the Far East to meet
the Japanese bullets. About my own and my household's grief I will not
tell you; it is not you who will fail to understand all the horror of my
position and the horrors of war; all this you have long ago painfully
realized, and you understand it all. How I have longed to visit you, to
have a talk with you! I had written to you a long letter in